EXCLUSIVE: The nation’s oldest theater company specializing in nurturing women writers and directors is in a seven-month court battle to recover $30,000, a significant sum for a nonprofit institution trying to survive a pandemic.Continue Reading
PRODUCERS WANT UNION CONCESSIONS BEFORE REOPENING
Broadway seeks givebacks from the industry’s unions before performances resume, the head of the trade group that represents commercial producers and theater owners told an online industry conference Monday.
“There have been general conversations [with unions] about what the contracts might look like, what might be changed,” Broadway League President Charlotte St. Martin said during the final day of The TheaterMakers Summit. “We’ll have to get to the changes, if any, toward wages and work rules and all of that to get open, because the producers will have to figure out if they can reopen. If you reopen at 50 percent of your previous attendance, nobody even comes close to recouping at 50 percent of the theater being open. So we’ll have to talk about things.”Continue Reading
DISNEY’S SCHUMACHER SEES SLOW RETURN OF AUDIENCES & TICKET PRICES
Speaking at an industry video conference Saturday, Broadway League Chairman Thomas Schumacher said that restarting Broadway after the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic will be gradual and dependent on tourism rebounding.
“Without those tourists, it’s going to be a challenge for us to hit both the capacity targets and the average ticket price that people want to hit,” Schumacher, president of Disney Theatrical and head of the Broadway trade association, said at producer Ken Davenport’s TheaterMakers Summit. “To imagine that the faucet just turns on isn’t a healthy way to approach it. It’s going to take some building.”Continue Reading
BROADWAY’S REOPENING GETS A SHOT IN THE ARM
A Covid-19 vaccine was said to be highly effective in a large trial, heightening the possibility that Broadway can restart next year.
BAY STREET THEATER PLANS SAG HARBOR COMPLEX
While performing arts spaces in the region remain largely shuttered because of Covid-19, Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theater said that it plans to build a permanent home, its first since the Long Island company was founded as a summer theater in 1991.Continue Reading
BROADWAY CONDUCTORS & ARRANGERS WILL FOSTER INCLUSION IN THE PIT
Growing up in Las Vegas, Ilana Atkins started studying piano at six but eventually hit a wall with classical music.
“The music didn’t speak to me,” she said. “As I got older, the most consistent response I got was, ‘Oh girl, you’re light skinned and you play the piano, you could be the next Alicia Keys.'”Continue Reading
‘NERDS’ PRODUCERS ACE ANGRY ANGELS IN COURT
EXCLUSIVE: A New York State judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by a dozen investors in Nerds, a musical about the tech titans Bill Gates and Steve Jobs that collapsed weeks before its first scheduled preview on Broadway.Continue Reading
‘JAGGED LITTLE PILL’ RECEIVES 15 TONY AWARD NOMINATIONS
Jagged Little Pill, a musical about teenage and parental angst based on Alanis Morissette’s bestselling 1995 album, was nominated for 15 Tony awards, the most of any show last season. Moulin Rouge!, a lavish musical about a star-crossed romance undone by fatal illness, received 14 nominations.Continue Reading
BROADWAY LEAGUE EXTENDS SHUTDOWN THROUGH MAY 2021
The Broadway League extended the industry’s shutdown through May 30, 2021, bringing theater’s devastating closure to at least 14 months.
BROADWAY LEAGUE’S $4,000 DUES DEMAND RANKLES MEMBERS
EXCLUSIVE: Amidst Broadway’s endless intermission, Broadway League President Charlotte St. Martin has a message for the trade association’s members: Pay your dues.Continue Reading
